Chapter 22 | Robin
Three carriages tore into our sight through the branches and foliage. They were rounding the bend at a fast pace, horses whinnying as their drivers urged them with slaps of their switches. Trying to make good time under the cover of darkness.
They hit the turn and slowed in a groan of creaking wheels and slicing voices.
An overturned tree was in their path. Courtesy of us.
Trees falling across roads were common occurrences in Sherwood Forest, to be sure. Yet it was an occurrence that deserved more caution when you took the inhabitants of the forest into consideration: outlaws, and the staging grounds for thieving gangs.
Guards popped out of the three carriages as they came to a stop, showing the very hesitation I expected. They were dressed in dark garb over their chainshirts, with shields raised. Expecting the worst.
There was no way around it: If Bishop Sutton was in one of those carriages, there would be bloodshed. I had hoped the bishop’s entourage would consist of few soldiers, but now I saw at least ten. A small number, and easily manageable, yet not something I took lightly.
Taking a life was never easy, and if these men refused to lay down their arms . . .
Three guards approached the fallen trunk. It was actually a grouping of three thin-boled birches, which wouldn’t take too long to move or cut through.
Luckily, we didn’t need long.
“Slice through or move them?” one of the guards asked.
The second, a helmet cross-guard covering his face, peered out the sides to the edges of the road. “Can’t barrel through. Whatever we do, got to make it quick. Captain?”
The third guard grumbled. “Just our luck.”
“Luck . . . or an omen?”
“Shut up, Halbeck.”
“Just saying, sir. The odds of this being a coincidence are . . . suspect.”
The guards fought among themselves, deciding how to move past the fallen trees.
Meanwhile, in the trees, I motioned in silence with my fists to my people. Everyone stilled, though some moved a few inches left or right. We had men on both sides of the road—Robert, Briggs, and his people across from us; me and my mates huddled about ten feet from the road’s bank. Cloaked in darkness and silence.
My eyes caught a gleam—a quick reflection of light from the moon on one of the Merry Men’s blades—across the road. Robert hid his blade once getting my attention, then nodded his painted face toward the second carriage.
Other guards were slowly meandering out of that carriage, too, hesitant and cautious as they drew their shields and swords. They scanned their surroundings, as any smart soldier would.
My bow slid down my shoulder. We could have attacked immediately, yet I wanted to see how many they numbered, first. It very well could have been a reverse ambush, where each carriage was stocked with ten to fifteen soldiers and no one else of importance. Then we would be in trouble.
Will Scarlet elbowed me. He made swift hand gestures he’d taught me, pointing at the first carriage, then the second, then the last one on the line.
I read his hands and learned a few things, based on his expertise: There were three to five soldiers in each carriage—or at least people. It was impossible to tell who sat inside those wooden hulls. He judged this by the way the carriages bowed from the weight of their occupants.
Ten to fifteen soldiers total. It was more than I wanted.
On the other side of Will, Little John watched me for any decision. I expected everyone did.
I held up a palm to make them hold a bit longer. Above me, in the trees, I heard the taut creaking of bowstrings being pulled back.
My heart rampaged in my chest, beating against my ribs. It was so loud I was sure everyone could hear it, even if they said nothing about my nerves.
Within seconds, those nerves melted into something else: a fierce protectiveness that wrapped around my body. I recalled the girls and that slave carriage, these three looking so much like the one we had ridden on our fateful night to Rufford Abbey.
I gritted my teeth, the anxiety lifting and morphing into fury. Fury for the girls, and for the pompous way these soldiers carried themselves. They had always thought lesser of us—that they owned the woods and villages.
They couldn’t have been further from the truth.
This was our home.
With a firm nod, I pulled my bow in front of me. I held two fingers up so the Merry Men in the trees could see my signal, while holding an arrow and my shortbow in my left hand.
This close—fifteen feet at the most—would cause dramatic damage from a well-aimed arrow, even through chainshirt armor. It would punch through cloth, iron, flesh, and muscle. It would snap bone and puncture arteries.
The vileness of war and combat overwhelmed me. It took over my mind, and that sick gleefulness, the anticipation of bloodshed and chaos, filled me.
I became something other than myself.
Then my hand came down in a slash, aimed at the front carriage.
One of the guards was bent over, beginning to lift one of the birch trees with a grunt and the help of another soldier.
Arrows whistled out of the darkness of the trees.
Guards gasped. Shields lifted.
The man lifting the birch tree took one in his ass, immediately straightening with a howl—dropping his shield so he could grab at his buttock.
Another arrow took him in the throat, and a final one lodged itself in his chest. He dropped face-forward into the trees with a jarring thud.
“Bandits!” screamed one of the front-most guards.
He spun around for the carriages, sprinting—
Earning two arrows in his back, one of them stabbing into his spine. The guard rolled forward into a wheel spoke and didn’t get back up.
Swords rasped out of scabbards as the guards formed a semi-circle around the second carriage.
They didn’t need to announce that they meant to protect whoever was in that second carriage, because they didn’t need to. We all saw it.
We focused our energy on them, firing arrows en masse.
Shields rang out with wooden thuds and metallic screeches as arrows were batted aside. Four other guards ventured off from the carriage toward the sides of the road where we hid.
Little John bellowed and rushed out of our hideaway, Will Scarlet hot on his heels. On the other side, Robert and Briggs yelled their own battle cries and engaged the soldiers, frightening them with their painted faces and wicked weapons.
Steel clashed. Sparks ignited from the melee.
I jumped up from my knees and sidestepped to get a better angle on the guards surrounding the second carriage, all of them facing outward toward the trees. The smell of copper, pine, steel, and oiled leather was thick in the air.
There were nearly ten guards near the middle carriage, and they didn’t join their comrades engaging John, Will, Robert, and Briggs. They stayed disciplined, showing their superior battlefield tactics.
I needed to break that line. If we wanted to cut down on death, we needed to cut down their morale.
So I joined John and Will.
Tuck came in from a rear approach with three other Merry Men, charging the road toward the third, backmost carriage.
Guards swarmed out of that one and met the friar, Atonement, and Discipline. The clash of their weapons clanged and jarred my brain.
I pulled an arrow from my shoulder quiver, aimed, and tightened my bowstring on the nearest soldier fighting John.
They moved fast in the dark, arms wheeling and steel crashing against the firm, fortified wood of Little John’s staff. My mate held it with both hands, using it as a defensive tool until he saw an opening and swung hard—
Just as I found an opening and loosed my arrow into the guard’s arm.
He lifted his shield at the last second—too late—and the arrow embedded in his shoulder.
Growling in pain, the soldier’s shield dropped and his arm hung limp as I knocked all the feeling out of it.
The guard backpedaled toward the carriage and the ring of soldiers defending our arrows.
John lunged, closing the gap, and cracked his quarterstaff over the man’s head, caving his helmet in. Blood spurt from his nose, mouth, and ears as his skull was crushed.
I scanned left and saw Will Scarlet dancing around the other two soldiers at the fallen birch trees. His twin swords blurred in the moonlight, creating a rapid staccato rhythm of clanking steel against shields and guards’ blades.
Will growled, teeth bared, and spun around one man, slicing into the back of his calf, hamstringing him. As he spun behind the soldier, his second blade parried the other soldier’s lunging weapon, then he rotated again.
Fast as a fox, Will Scarlet wrapped his arm around the man’s neck. The hamstrung soldier stabbed awkwardly, off-balance, but Will had a fleshy shield in front of him now and the guard accidentally stabbed into his own comrade’s chest.
He wailed after seeing what he’d done in the darkness. He hesitated, stutter-stepping.
Then I pulled back on my bowstring, pushed out from the foliage onto the edge of the road, and launched an arrow point-blank into the back of the guards’ neck.
I didn’t stay to watch him crumple to the ground, dead. I was already spinning toward the carriages—
“There! That stature—must be the woman!” one of the soldiers in the ring yelled, pointing in my direction.
My heart flipped in my chest, stomach dropping.
The guards advanced toward me in a shield wall formation, approaching Little John and the few Merry Men beside him, including Griff and Jamie.
So that is what they’ve been waiting for! Me to show my face. I was a fool believing I was just the same as everyone else here. The hood might’ve hidden my face, but my wider hips, thinner waist, and feminine stature could never hide my true nature. By now, everyone knew the Merry Men were led by a woman. So was it that much of a surprise they were trying to target me?
Cut off the head of the snake, and you kill the entire body. At least in their minds.
As they approached, Merry Men roared and surrounded me in a bubble. Robert, Briggs, and his group came from the other side of the road, rounding the first carriage and slicing down a wayward guard as they moved. Will came in from behind me, while Friar Tuck had finished with his battle at the rear and charged from the enemies’ backs.
We had them sandwiched between three forces, yet they only focused on me.
It was madness.
So much for getting out of this with as little bloodshed as possible!
I shot one, two, three more arrows—
Then I flung my bow down as the arrows bounced harmlessly off shields and armor. I drew my sword and the tiny buckler at my left hip to raise as a wrist-shield.
Little John stepped in front of me with a bellow that made the leaves on the trees shiver. He flexed his body, seeming to grow to an absurd size in front of me.
The approaching soldiers hesitated.
John flipped and wheeled his staff around in daring circles, keeping everyone at bay.
Will floated in from the side, unbeknownst to everyone, and his swords sang their song of death. They whirled and cut into the sides of the shield wall.
The guards stuttered more, trying to focus on both Will’s destruction and John’s intimidation.
Then Robert and his men laid into the other side on the opposite side of the road, while Tuck came in from behind and punched a man in the goddamn back of the neck, flattening him with a single well-placed strike.
The shield wall broke quickly. There was simply too much to focus on, to where no one could focus on a damn thing.
It was every man for himself, which was exactly where we wanted them.
One soldier managed to push through John’s guard and charge at me. He likely suspected I’d be an easy target because I was a woman.
My blade sang in the same way Will’s did. He had taught me well in the past months between our nighttime fornicating and daytime strategizing sessions.
I swung my blade left to right, keeping the guard away, and he backpedaled when he realized I was faster and more skilled than him.
I charged, giving him no quarter, closing the gap in one stride.
He backed up into Little John, face aghast with fear.
John felt him, spun, and wrapped a thick bicep around the smaller man’s neck.
He squeezed. Eyes bulged. Sword and shield dropped as the man’s hands came to grasp at John’s arm, feet kicking wildly, face turning red and purple.
I slid my blade into his chest three times in rapid succession to stop his squirming. Blood slashed across my face. Pleasure and glee filled me as my sword sank into his chest cavity, pierced his heart, and ended him. As the blood coated his chin in gurgling coughs, I grew warm and wet between the legs.
Not having time to think of the sadistic feeling that washed over me, I moved past him toward Jamie, who was fighting two guards by himself.
Jamie backpedaled into a tree trunk, looking over one of the guards’ shoulders at me.
It happened fast—one minute, our best carriage driver was working defensively, seemingly having everything in hand.
The next moment, he took a nick across the top of his palm, seethed, and spun to face that second attacker.
The first one sidestepped and plunged his blade into Jamie’s side, just below the ribs.
“No!” I screamed as I charged.
Jamie grunted, fell to one knee, and took a blade across the throat.
Blood sprayed, mere seconds before I got to him.
Tuck charged in beside me and with a quick one-two combo imprinted his sideways crosses into one man’s forehead—skull cracked and fractured as the man’s eyes went wild.
I took the second guard in quick jabs and slices.
The man gasped and reeled—
Directly into the skewering blades of Will Scarlet.
Robert and his men made quick work of the remaining guards, and within minutes everyone lay dead at our feet—including Jamie and two other Merry Men.
Three deaths to their fifteen.
The preemptive strike had been a major success, even with them being able to regroup and defend themselves.
I stormed toward the second carriage, stepping over dead bodies in the road. My blood pumped. Somewhere along the way I’d taken my own small wound across the forearm. It trickled blood down my wrist, my fingers, and around the handle of the sword I held.
I heard the loud voice of a man praying swiftly inside the carriage. “God, Your faithful servant seeks assistance. Urgently, Dear Lord, I need—”
My hand gripped the knob, expecting an imposter, an ambush, a dupe, a sword plunging at my belly.
“Robin, wait!” John commanded.
I swung the door open, ignoring him, the pulsing rage in my mind too loud to ignore.
My eyes widened.
It was no imposter, ambush, or dupe. There was no blade waiting for me.
There was only Bishop Sutton, sitting by himself in the carriage, veiled in white robes, hands clasping the large pectoral cross around his neck, lifting it high in front of his face as he prayed.
His closed eyes shot open in red-rimmed fear when I swung the door open. He gasped at the sight of me in the twisted moonlight.
I held my blade at his throat. His hands lifted high in surrender as he dropped the cross and the necklace amulet smacked against his robed chest.
“Hail, Bishop Sutton. Apologies for the interruption, but there’s a bit of a detour ahead.”